Successful first batch!!!

While in Argentina on the farm, Vida exposed me to Wild Fermentation, a book about making your own cheese and vinegars, wines and breads, beers and sprouts: all sorts of yummy foods that you can get in the store, but are so much more fun to make yourself. My parents found it for me for Christmas, and I was eager to try some recipes. My cheese was good, and I want to make more. But the real excitement exploded last night! In January I started the bug for a batch of ginger ale. I bottled a gallon of ginger ale by the end of January. It doesn't take long for it to be ready if the setting is right, but I realized after a week or so that it wasn't warm enough for the fermentation process to continue. I moved the bottles to a better spot and found the ale begin to carbonate. Thursday night I opened the mason jar of it to see how it was - flat and not the perfect flavor was what my tongue (and everyone else's) told me. A little bummed, as I planned to open them last night for our Leap Year house party, I stuck the other bottles in the fridge to chill and made a plan to compensate for the flavor: lime juice, sugar, and vodka. I emptied the contents of the mason jar into my blend and stuck it in the freezer to get cold. The first folks arrived and weren't drinking alcohol for Lent, so I dared to open a new bottle of ginger ale with the hopes it could be served solo. POP went the "cork" and PHSHSHT went the ginger ale like a bottle of champagne. The bottles have that ez-cap, like Grolsch. Evidently the mason jar didn't keep a good seal because the other four bottles of ginger ale were AWESOME!! I had a lot of fun letting folks sample them, though there wasn't a lot to go around. Now I want to get another bug going! Kombucha is on my list to start this month, too. Unfortunately, the sourdough starter went moldy before it got bubbly - again a temperature thing probably. I can't wait to try some more...